MEN OF THE OLD STONE AGE 281 to another limestone country threaded with caves, the most famous of which are Altamira and Castillo. Sheltering cliffs and grottoes in the front of these caverns were sought as working places, shelters and communal homes by succeeding races of lower and upper palæolithic peoples during an enormously long period of time, estimated by geologists at over 50,000 years; but it is only in the upper palæolithic that the real development of the art of sculpture and painting begins and may be followed step by step from the crudest stages up to a high impressionistic stage in which wonderfully naturalistic effects are produced by the combination of three colors, black, ocher and red, in the socalled "polychrome" paintings. Throughout all this region, a single culture existed; and probably a single race known as the "Cro-Magnon," tall and large-brained people, nomadic in habit, living only by the chase. Accompanied by Professor Emile Cartailhac of the University of Toulouse, we first entered the great cavern of Niaux, three hundred feet above a small tributary of the Ariège near Tarascon. Advancing half a mile into the interior we reached a splendid chamber in which the smooth, polished walls were covered with black outlines of game animals drawn in oxide of manganese mingled with grease, giving an imperishable lithographic effect on the smooth limestone. Occasionally the animals are laid on in solid masses of black, as in the case of that species so greatly admired by palæolithic man, the majestic bison depicted with superb crests, fine eyes and muzzle most perfectly drawn. There are also stupid-looking horses, with dull eyes very like the wild Przewalsky horses which can be seen in the New York Zoölogical Park. Here too are the ibex, the chamois, some spirited examples of the stag, but no reindeer or mammoth. The day following our visit to Niaux we traversed the extremely narrow passages of Le Portel, often being obliged to crawl on hands and knees. In this cavern the drawings are inferior in style to those of Niaux but red color has been used with the black. The best drawing of bison was seen here, the feet especially being thoroughly and finely drawn. Then our motor route carried us directly through the vast tunnel of Mas d'Azil, traversed by the Arize River, where the last stages of upper palæolithic art are found representing the time just prior to the disappearance of the great race of art-loving hunters before the coming of the first wave of neolithic weavers and agriculturalists. The discovery of the already famous cavern Tuc d'Audoubert had taken place only three days previous to our visit, and the sons of the Comte de Begouen, who had made the discovery, paddled us in an improvised boat into the entrance of this cave. The chambers were brilliant with exquisite limestone stalactites. As the Comte had discovered, favorable wall surfaces bore scupltures in very low relief of all the characteristic animals of the upper palæolithic period, namely, bison, horses, reindeer, stag and mammoth. It is in this cavern Professor Emile Cartailhac of the University of Toulouse and Professor George Grant MacCurdy of Yale University at the entrance to Niaux cavern that the first clay models of the palæolithic artists have quite recently been found, two statuettes of the bison, modeled in clay with the fingers. Each of the caves of this region, Marsoulas, Gourdan and the great cavern of Gargas, exhibits stages in the development of paleolithic art — that is, each cave belongs to a distinct period of development. In the Dordogne group around Les Eyzies we found the birthplace of palæolithic history. Here human history is recorded in a continuous current for a period of 60,000 years, passing from the lower palæolithic of Le Moustier through all the barbaric and medieval stages to the hamlets of the peasant and the chateaux of the French nobility. In the centre of this Dordogne group is the little hamlet of Cro-Magnon where was first discovered many years ago the grave of a member of this great hunting and artistic race. Here the earliest explorers, Lartet and Christy, laid the foundations of the successive chapters of palæolithic development; but it is only in recent years that the successive culture or industry stages have been sharply distinguished, so that now the flint implements furnish the key to all the successive periods and subperiods of human development. We were guided by Abbé Breuil and M. Peyrony along the picturesque valleys and cliffs of the Vézère and Beune, tracing the whole series of inventions in flint implements and all the stages of cavern mural art from the crudest drawings MEN OF THE OLD STONE AGE 283 and etchings of the mammoth to the superb polychrome frescoes on the walls of the cavern of Font-de-Gaume, where a high stage of art is displayed, although many of the paintings have greatly suffered from a natural incrustation of lime which covers them like a partly transparent veil. Through Bayonne and San Sebastian we reached Santander where Professor Hugo Obermaier, another able member of a most remarkable group of anthropologists, guided us in a tour of the Spanish caves. Near Puente Viesgo is the cavern and grotto of Castillo, which towers above the valley. At the entrance of this grotto is the most complete continuous succession of cultures which has ever been found, dating from the middle of the older palæolithic or Acheulian to the beginning of the age of Copper and Bronze. During intermittent periods of occupation the successive races have made their fireplaces and left their implements. This succession was selected as a type for a large model in the American Museum, which will be prepared through the kind coöperation of Professor Obermaier himself. The cavern is filled with crude drawings and many handprints of palæolithic men. Professor Cartailhac lighting an acetylene lamp at the entrance to Le Portel. |